


open hand or closed fist would be fine

by monsterfuckerdean (MushroomDoggo)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Gen, HBO SPN, Hurt No Comfort, Rain, Scars, Self-Harm, kripe era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29231781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MushroomDoggo/pseuds/monsterfuckerdean
Summary: Based on a tumblr prompt: "any chance you’d write something about the hbo spn side plot of dean getting purposefully injured bc he’s getting addicted to Cas’ grace ? Cause that’s been stuck in my head since I heard it" - anonymousDean Winchester has seen God, and he needs more
Comments: 5
Kudos: 41
Collections: HBO Supernatural





	open hand or closed fist would be fine

Dean Winchester sat alone in his car. 

The car was parked in the street near a high school football field. 

The football field was marshy from the rain.

The rain was still coming down hard.

Little raindrops pinged off the metal roof and rolled down the windshield like perfect beads of pungent sweat. The Impala had something wrong with its AC lately, and Dean hadn't found the time to investigate just yet, which meant the car was rapidly filling up with an oppressive wet heat. Despite that, Dean sipped his coffee. He did not remove his jacket.

He looked out the window, between the rainwater tracks carved across its surface, at the football field. Though its grass wasn’t much greener than a used sponge, and the bleachers were hardly fit for thirty minutes of spectator enjoyment--let alone several hours--it made Dean smile.

And, yet, it made his stomach clench, too.

High school football fields were a source of significant consternation for Dean.

It was hard to explain why, precisely. It was just a feeling they gave him: a longing for something that couldn't exist, a nostalgia for a life he had never lived.

When Dean looked out onto the poorly-landscaped grass and the imprecise spray paint, all he saw were ghosts. And not salt-pellet, iron-bar, burn-the-bones ghosts. Those he could handle.

No, these were mirages. The imprints of pasts he could have had, and yet was never afforded.

He sipped his coffee.

The coffee burned his throat. He wondered if he could burn his throat bad enough to need medical attention.

Down on the field, Dean hoisting his helmet in the air, cheering and smiling, sweaty hair plastered to his forehead… held aloft by his teammates. Dressed in school colors.

He sipped his coffee.

The burn wasn't as pronounced this time, but the heat was still there. He wondered if he could get heat stroke just by sitting in this steamed-up sauna of a car.

On the asphalt near the fence, Dean was tossing a baseball to an unseen partner, laughing and smiling and yet so strangely serious. A red checkered flannel tied about his waist. The perfect flick of the wrist on an underhand pitch.

He sipped his coffee. 

His hand was shaking. He wondered if the shaking was enough to ask for help.

In the alcove beneath the bleachers, all piercings and tattoos, Dean was holding a cigarette, arguing pointedly about local punk bands. 

He tried to sip his coffee, but his lips trembled.

Can of spray paint, the harsh rattle-hiss, like a snake. Illegal art on the track.

He put his cup back in the cup holder, but not without spilling a bit over his fingers.

Bleachers. Top row. A father, cheering for his son.

Dean ran his hands through his hair, smearing coffee and sweat through it like styling gel. He could feel his throat beginning to hitch and catch on itself, like a sort of strangulation.

He wondered if he could force himself into hyperventilation with enough focus.

He wanted Cas.

He hadn't always thought this way about football fields. He also hadn't always thought that way about himself--about the thousands of missed opportunities and discarded lives that so clearly lay in his wake--but Jesus if he didn't think about it now. All the time. Everywhere he looked.

But especially when he looked out on a high school football field.

For other teenagers, that's where  _ life _ happens. That's the place where you know who you are, whoever that may be. The football field is the cultural center of any teen's life.

Except Dean's.

In the distance, there was a deep rumble of thunder. Dean closed his eyes and listened, silently, as the sound of the rain bloomed in intensity. He tried to focus on the way the sound grew, not just in volume but in rhythm and range and tone, but he couldn’t.

His gaze returned to the football field. Without even meaning to.

In many ways, Dean still felt like a teenager. He was about as smart as one, and perhaps even less self-aware. All those essential teenage skills--riding a bike, asking people out, sitting through boring classes and presentations--were missing from his repertoire. 

About the only thing he had going for him was how to make and use fake IDs. And maybe lying, if that counts for anything.

He was stuck. Matured too fast, yet still so youthfully ignorant. Childish, even.

And he'd never thought about it--not  _ once _ \--until Castiel had touched him.

After a hunt, Dean had found a gash on his calf. It was bleeding pretty heavily, and he found that each hobbling step made it gush all the more.

"Dean, sit down!" Sam grabbed him by the shoulders and steered him to the hood of the Impala.

Dean sucked in a sharp breath. "I'm good, Sammy!" He forced a laugh. "No way in hell I'm letting you drive."

"Would you shut the fuck up about the car for once?" Sam spat, dutifully tearing a strip of fabric from the bottom of his flannel shirt. "We gotta get you to a hospital. I'm not waiting for an ambulance."

"Whoa, whoa-- you're kidding me, right?"

Same knelt on the ground and began tying the flannel into a tourniquet up near Dean's knee.

"Sam." Dean leaned forward, a hand gripping the edge of the hood to keep him steady. "You can't take me to a hospital. We're wanted in probably twenty states by now, you can't--"

"I'm not letting you die, Dean." Sam yanked hard on the ends of the flannel, and Dean winced.

"I'm not gonna die!" Dean pounded his fist on the hood of the Impala. "Jesus Christ, Sam."

"Right, right-- because you've never done  _ that _ before." Sam got to his feet, glaring down at Dean's bloody form on the hood of the car. "Get in."

"No way."

"Get in the car, Dean."

"I said no!" Dean pushed himself off the hood. He gave Sam a rough shove on the chest, which Sam withstood easily. "I'm not getting you arrested!"

"Dean, I--"

"No!" Dean roared. "No. There's-- there's gotta be something else we can do. Maybe a needle?"

"It's a little big for a needle and thread!" Sam spat back, gesturing at the gaping wound. “It’s all full of dirt and gravel and shit-- it’s probably infected.”

“Big whoop!” Dean threw his hands in the air. “I’ve got disinfecting liquors aplenty.”

“ _ Dean!” _

And there was this particular tone to Sam’s voice. Something that was as much the anger of his father and the protectiveness of his mother. Something that was as much the fear of a younger brother and the fierceness of an elder. 

All Dean could think was  _ he’s too fucking human to do the smart thing _ .

And that was when Castiel arrived.

He did what he would do a hundred times over. But, that night, he did it for the first time.

He did it without speaking, without warning, without even an ounce of what could be called emotion. Good old, wooden Castiel. Could always be counted on to show up and deus you right ex the machina. 

Cas hit the ground running, one might say. He appeared already mid-stride towards Dean, his arm extended in his direction. Dean hardly had time to flinch, which he certainly would have. He may have even put up some kind of fight.

With two fingers--two human fingers, on an utterly inhuman being--he reached out towards the wound. Dean remembered an inexplicable moment of fear when he thought Castiel might slip those fingers right into the flesh and tear him apart, but his touch was gentle. Gentler than Dean had felt in a long time.

Through his fingertips came a blue-white rush of energy.

It healed the wound, sure. But there had been something  _ else _ .

Dean closed his eyes, wishing away the memory. His hands gripped the steering wheel tight enough to make it groan beneath his palms. He tried so hard to force the longing, the burning  _ need _ , out of his head.

It didn’t work, of course. The rain lulled him into perfect, hypnotic stillness. His physical discomfort was so distant from his mind that it could not ground him. His insides roiled, but not in any way that could have been measured. Not in any way that could be fixed.

The ghosts of unlived lives swirled over the football field, and Dean watched their intricate dance from the safety of his car.

He wished for Cas. He wished for the blue-white energy to take the ghosts away.

It was a familiar wish by now.

It was a wish that had driven Dean to do some less-than-heroic things.

It was easy, really. So easy to trick the angel-- almost too easy.

After all, Dean Winchester was a fucking disaster. Already covered in scars, already having survived a little alcohol poisoning here, a little overdose there. The walking wounded, he was; a Frankenstein’s monster of bad decisions and lasting consequences.

When the walls were closing in, when all those alternate selves seemed to taunt him with their intricacies and their livelihoods and their weighty reality, Dean Winchester would hurt himself.

The first time, it hadn’t even been on purpose. He’d simply had a little too much to drink, hoping that each sip would be a drop in the tsunami he built to wash away the regret. Hoping that the great wave would wash over his mind and drag the other selves out to sea. Praying--actually, really praying--that the energy would course through him again, and he would see himself as Important and Real and Big and Right, and he could be at peace once more.

He hadn’t realized just how big the wave was. The energy clenched around his stomach, and he vomited up the Great Wave, and with the Purge he felt all Doubt and Hate and Blasphemy rush out of him, and he could see through the Angel that the Lord God had a Plan for him.

And then… Castiel let go.

And he collapsed into a puddle of his own filth, and doubts seeped back into him, and he felt so small and disgusting and awkward and foolish.

“You should be more careful,” Castiel had said.

And Dean hadn’t been able to say anything, because he was trying so hard not to connect the dots. He hadn't been able to say anything because he was crumpled up in an alleyway, having avoided certain death, and he hadn't even been able to look up at his savior before he'd vanished away to heaven.

More important things to do.

More important people to save.

Because Dean Winchester was Small.

So the dance had begun. Whenever Dean felt Small, he would hurt himself. A slip of the knife, an extra drink, a pill popped without thought. Every time, Castiel would appear to wipe his slate clean.

Every time, Dean would be left feeling dirtier than before.

Sure, he was always perfect. Ever since Castiel pulled him out of Hell, his skin was smoother than marble, and his joints didn’t creak anymore, and his voice wasn’t husky from smoking, and he honestly felt like a goddamn  _ superhero _ compared to before. 

But Castiel had touched him. And, through his Angel, Dean had seen God. And there was no going back.

Against his better judgement, Dean got out of the car.

He was trying very hard not to think the thing which he very clearly thought.

He wanted Cas.

He wanted to be Healed.

He wanted to be struck by lightning.

It wasn't an unreasonable request--not in this brewing storm--and it would most certainly earn him a visit from Castiel. Even so, Dean tried to think of other reasons a man in a suit might plod over a flooded football field in a rainstorm.

He came up empty.

It’s not like there was anyone around to see him. It was a Saturday, and the school was closed, and the street was pretty much barren. Who would stop him? Certainly not Castiel. All the times Cas had healed him and he'd never  _ once _ turned up to stop the hurt from happening. Just patching up the mess once it'd been made.

The mud sucked at Dean's dress shoes, and he thought  _ perfect, the less insulation the better _ and let his socks get soaked and his shoes get looser on his feet.

With every step, being struck by lightning felt both more appealing and less appealing. More appealing to the chattering demon in his mind which begged for another glimpse of God's great cosmic plan, and less appealing to the part of his mind that felt pain.

It’d take a good hit to get rid of, he thought. The lightning. Way more than some cut, or even poison. If he could get himself fried extra-crispy, maybe Castiel would need to work on him for longer than a few seconds, and then maybe he’d be able to hang onto that feeling once he was done. He just had to remember it. If he could remember God’s plan for him, he would be okay.

He wouldn’t need Castiel anymore.

One of his shoes came off, and Dean just kept walking. The mud snuck into his sock and slipped between his toes and he began to feel like he was dragging a sack of wet cement along with him.

The rain was coming down harder. The thunder had risen from a distant grumbling to closer, sharper, separated strikes. 

Do you have any idea how wonderful it is to know there's a plan?

To feel like someone, anyone, knows what they're fucking doing?

To see that you're not just tripping from one responsibility to the next, failures piling up behind you, path narrowing ahead of you? To see that it's all part of an intricate machine?

_ Nice, nice, very nice. _

_ Everyone in the same device. _

Dean grit his teeth. It was kind of cold in the rain. He wondered if that made a difference.

He reached the center of the football field, which he figured was as good a place as any to try to be struck by lightning during a thunderstorm.

Though he'd walked himself out here, he suddenly had the most overwhelming urge to sprint back to his car. The rational part of him, he assumed. The plain-old human part which didn't think the angel could save him. Not if he truly died.

The rain soaked his suit--the suit which wasn't his, which he'd dug up at the thrift store, the sort they reserve for homeless men who need a suit for work, Christ why had he taken that suit? Was he not garbage enough as it was?--and it stuck to his arms like wet kelp. 

He folded his arms, gripping the wet fabric where it twisted sharply around his flesh, and he felt very Small.

The wind whipped up. It pulled his wet hair off of his forehead and slapped down in a new location. He repositioned the sopping mess away from his eyes and couldn't help feeling like a drowned rat.

Thunder rolled. He searched the horizon for a lightning strike.

"Come on…" he muttered, like he was squinting at the baseball game on the motel TV. "Come on, what're you waiting for?"

He set his jaw, turning his gaze as far upwards as he could manage in the rain. He wiped a rough hand across his face, as if that did any good.

The sky darkened.

The strike began to build.

Dean could feel it, bone-deep. It was a strange prickling, plummeting feeling-- like the one you get just before that first drop in a roller coaster, only this was… more. The roller coaster only makes your stomach do flips. This felt like every cell in Dean's body was fizzing and popping at once, and the feeling only grew in intensity the longer he stood there.

He waited.

He had to clench his fists against that human desire to sprint to safety. It was always that last-minute fear and spike of adrenaline--the one that should have saved his life--which convinced him so thoroughly to stay.

It was Weak to run. And Dean wasn't Weak. He wasn't Small, either. God would show him that. God would agree.

The fizzing feeling had built to nigh-unbearable levels. Dean quaked with the effort it took to stand still, to keep his muscles tightened and his fists closed tight.

The strike came.

It was bright. It was loud. It was hot. It was so hot it was cold, and so cold it was hot. So bright that it turned everything else black. So loud that you could hardly hear it.

It's hard to know what exactly happened, but Dean was not struck. By all rights, he should have been, and yet… 

After the strike, he was in just the same place he'd been before, ringed by singed grass and the heavy smell of ozone. His arms hovered at his sides, palms turned to the sky, shaking like leaves in anticipation for the hurt that had not come. 

He still looked like a drowned rat. He still felt Small.

But he hadn't been struck.

"What the hell are you doing?"

The voice was soft, but still rough around the edges. Still deep in a manner which was very nearly otherworldly.

Dean whirled about. The one shoe he had left slipped precariously in the mud, and he had to throw his arms out to keep from falling.

"Do you think this is funny?" Castiel said. His voice was even, though not at all comforting. "Do you think killing yourself is some sort of game?"

Dean's fists unclenched.

The way Castiel looked at him… it wasn’t even disappointment, not really. It was colder than a snake, the look in his eyes. 

Dean had expected anger. So much so that he had practically played the scene out in his head: Castiel shouting, roaring in a voice that crashed down from heaven itself, pummeling him into the mud only to fix him up and pummel him again.

"I can't keep fixing you." Castiel's face was unmoving. "You can't keep doing this, Dean."

This wasn’t anger at all. This was an intervention.

Dean swallowed, and his throat stuck to itself. "D-doing what?"

Castiel steeled himself. His gaze flicked up to the sky for a moment, as if looking for guidance from the man upstairs. "You think I don't see what you're doing?" He asked, taking a few difficult steps through the mud towards Dean.

Dean sensed danger and tried to move backwards, but the mud sucked at his feet and kept him rooted in place. "I was just--"

"I thought you were smart!" Cas snapped.

Dean tore his foot out of the mud, intending to step back, but the very force of it threw him completely off balance. His arms pedaled at his sides as he tried to regain his footing.

Castiel grabbed Dean by the front of his shirt.

"I thought I'd let you see how much it hurts, and you'd make the right choice," Cas continued. "I should've looked closer. You've always done this to yourself, and you always will."

Dean grabbed Cas by the wrist, intending to shake him off, but found that his grip had the strength of pure granite. "Done  _ what _ ?!"

"Tried to kill yourself!" Castiel spat back. "Tried to maim and demean and permanently alter-- I mean, look at you!"

Cas released his grip on Dean adding in the slightest shove.

"Before I pulled you out, you were covered in scars." Castiel grabbed Dena's sleeve and forced it up his arm. "I can still see them. I can see how you got them, and I know you didn't come by these honestly."

It was a strange thing to say about scars, but Dean yanked his arm away regardless. "The fuck is that supposed to mean?!"

"You know exactly what it means," Castiel said. His voice was so dark and so deep that Dean wondered if it was Jimmy-Cas or… or Cas-Cas. "You may not always be so brazen as to stand out in a thunderstorm, but you have always put yourself in the line of fire.”

“So what if I--”

“You've always invited scars,” Cas said in disgust.

Dean clenched and unclenched his fists. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, then, what  _ am _ I talking about?” Cas scoffed. “Please. Enlighten me.”

But the answer was gone.

Not totally. Dean, of course, knew exactly what he wanted. 

He wanted to hurt, because he deserved it, and then he wanted to be healed, because he deserved that, too. 

He wanted to have that momentary connection to God, to see that he Belonged, to see that great Plan, the Web which connected everyone to everything and back again. 

He wanted to know that the world needed him. That someone would bend the rules to keep him around.

He wanted grace.

He wanted Cas.

He wanted those two gentle fingers to take away the ghosts, to show him a future of certainty, to take him to a world without pain.

It was a pain in and of itself. A cavity in his chest, like Castiel had reached in there and torn something out, like the cavity was still seeking the thing that was missing, like the very emptiness in Dean’s heart tugged him towards the healing light of God.

Dean took a swing at Castiel.

Cas dodged the punch and shoved Dean away. Though it was hard, it wasn’t an angelic shove; it was just a regular, human shove that put Dean on his ass in the mud on a vacant high school football field.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Cas said. “But don’t think it’s because I don’t want to.”

He turned to go.

Dean scrambled forward, losing track of where his limbs were in the muddy mess around him. “Cas, wait!”

“I’m not your babysitter, Dean,” Cas called over his shoulder. “And I’m not your parole officer.”

“I thought you were supposed to be my guardian angel!” Dean shouted after him, anger boiling up in the cavity in his chest. “I thought you were supposed to fix me!”

Castiel didn’t say anything. He just kept walking.

Dean blinked, and he was gone.

And he was alone. He was alone, on his hands and knees, covered in mud and clumps of grass with white spray paint still clinging to each blade. He was alone, and the cavity ached all the more, because it had to pull so much harder to reach Castiel.

The rain stopped.

Dean stayed here in the mud a moment, remembering the time he had laid in his own vomit in the alley. And the time he’d sat in the motel bathtub fully-clothed. And the time he’d waited for rescue after a hit-and-run.

When the memories faded to a blur of mucky shame, Dean hauled himself to his feet and walked back to the car. He got behind the wheel covered in mud, something he never would have dreamed of doing just a few years ago.

He put his hands on the wheel. 

He started to cry.

He resisted the urge to bash his brains out on the steering wheel.


End file.
